Change America's gun culture: Mass killing of innocents can no longer be acceptable.

Change America's gun culture: Mass killing of innocents can no longer be acceptable.

Copyright 2014: Houston Chronicle

Updated 8:52 pm, Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Photo: David McNew, Stringer

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ISLA VISTA, CA - MAY 27: People hug at a public memorial on the Day of Mourning and Reflection for the victims of a killing spree at University of California, Santa Barbara on May 27, 2014 in Isla Vista, California. Elliot Rodger killed six college students at the start of Memorial Day weekend and wounded seven other people, stabbing three then shooting and running people down in his BMW near UCSB before shooting himself in the head as he drove. Police officers found three legally-purchased guns registered to him inside the vehicle. Prior to the murders, Rodger posted YouTube videos declaring his intention to annihilate the girls who rejected him sexually and others in retaliation for his remaining a virgin at age 22. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) ***BESTPIX*** less

ISLA VISTA, CA - MAY 27: People hug at a public memorial on the Day of Mourning and Reflection for the victims of a killing spree at University of California, Santa Barbara on May 27, 2014 in Isla Vista, ... more

Photo: David McNew, Stringer

Change America's gun culture: Mass killing of innocents can no longer be acceptable.

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"Why did Chris die?"

That's the question the anguished father, the enraged father, in Santa Barbara, Calif., asked last Saturday even though he already knew the answer.

"Chris died," Richard Martinez said, answering his own question, "because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris's right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, 'Stop this madness; we don't have to live like this?' Too many have died. We should say to ourselves: not one more."

Just the day before, Martinez's 20-year-old son, Christopher, a student at the University of California Santa Barbara, had been murdered by a mentally disturbed young man who had access to guns. The shooter, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger, killed six people and injured 13 before killing himself near the UCSB campus.

To be brutally frank, Mr. Martinez, your son and the others shot to death by Rodger are mere collateral damage to an obsession fiercely held by a group of Americans - the National Rifle Association and its supporters, including a covey of "craven, irresponsible politicians" - who have lost all perspective on common sense, the sacredness of human life and an acknowledgement of the common good. The Aurora, Colo., moviegoers, the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Fort Hood soldiers - the list could go on and on - are all collateral damage as far as the gunsters among us are concerned.

The angelic, little six-year-olds in a Connecticut classroom, worshippers at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and the Washington Navy Yard employees didn't realize it at the time, but they died for a cause: the right of every American to keep and bear any and all manner of arms they desire and to use those lethal weapons to kill their fellow human beings at the slightest provocation, real or otherwise. So say the gunsters.

They're beyond argument, beyond debate. Their fealty to an individualist view of the Second Amendment is unyielding. They're unmoved by evidence underscoring how perverse we've become in our obsession with guns, unmoved by evidence from other countries that have responded effectively to outbreaks of gun violence in their midst. Australia, for example, was averaging one mass killing spree a year until its infamous Port Arthur Massacre in 1996, when a gunman opened fire on tourists at a seaside resort, killing 35 people and wounding 23 more. The nation changed its laws and has not experienced a mass shooting since.

Yes, we acknowledge that Rodger, no matter how disturbed he must have been, lawfully acquired the three automatic handguns he possessed. His increasingly bizarre behavior alarmed his parents, who did what they should have done. They alerted the police, who found that he did not meet the legal criteria for involuntary psychiatric hospitalization. The therapists who met with him apparently didn't pick up warning signs. And, yes, he killed with knives as well as guns.

Solutions don't come easy, if at all, and yet U.S. Reps. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., and Ron Barber, D-Ariz., are at least making an effort to engage the horror of gun violence and the mental health connection to the mass killings of recent years (200 since 2006). The Murphy bill would require states to adopt laws permitting judges to order recalcitrant mental patients into outpatient care, among a number of other components; Barber's bill is more of a conventional expansion of mental-health treatment, education and research.

We applaud their efforts, and yet it's difficult not to be cynical about the prospects. What has to change is the culture of acceptance that prevails in this country, a culture that views the mass killing of innocent men, women and children as a fact of life (no pun intended). Mothers Against Drunk Driving changed the culture, as did seat-belt advocates and anti-smoking crusaders. To say that it may take a very long time is no answer for a grieving father, but it may be all we have for now.